8 comments

  • asah 0 minutes ago
    [delayed]
  • jillsy 42 minutes ago
    My high school hosted the county's special day class for kids with severe cognitive and physical disabilities, a majority from spina bifida. If this stem cell method can actually repair the spinal cord before birth, the quality of life improvement is absolutely enormous.
  • Telemakhos 8 minutes ago
    Does the physical repair also help with the mental developmental effects? Children with spinal bifida often develop cognitive abilities much slower than children without it.
  • elric 2 hours ago
    Incredible to see some promising results in stem cell research. Hopefully a safe and successful application can give a boost to some other areas where stem cells might prove useful (like maybe one day we can regrow damaged heart tissue like this).
    • SadErn 1 hour ago
      Best news is the stem cells used are from donated placentas. So no political footballs, just a true blessing to a child.
  • snyp 1 hour ago
    I did not even know it was possible to operate on a fetus. Its insane how far we have come. Very promising results!
    • armadsen 9 minutes ago
      Not only is it possible, fetal surgery is more or less standard treatment for spina bifida at this point. The news here is about the stem cell patch being applied during the surgery. (I have a child with spina bifida. We tried to get her into this trial, but did not qualify.)
    • alexpotato 12 minutes ago
      The first episode of the Surgeon's Cut [0] on Netflix shows a doctor:

      - operating in utero

      - while the mother is awake

      - in an outpatient/doctor's office setting

      - to implant a balloon in the upper respiratory tract of a fetus with a, I believe, cleft palate so that it's lungs can develop normally.

      It really is wild what modern medicine can do these days.

      0 - https://www.netflix.com/title/81004466

  • vpribish 2 hours ago
    Interesting - they had done surgery before, but not with stem cells. 6 babies operated on, results were very good and they are recruiting for phase 2
  • cwoodyard 21 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • tsss 2 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • mschuster91 2 hours ago
      There are people who do not want to have abortions. Either for religious reasons, because they themselves belong to a specific disability group (e.g. the blind and deaf) or because they tried hard already to get pregnant in the first place.

      Especially for the latter, "make a new one" can mean a ticket reaching into the 6 figures, months of egg extractions, implantation attempts and spontaneous auto-abortions.

    • nullstyle 2 hours ago
      What a gross and idiotic take. “Just abort it”; i’m pro choice, but IMO life must be regarded as more sacred than what ‘ole tsss here considers. I can only conclude tsss has never dealt with any real loss in their life.